08/14/2026
It’s Friday so I’m breaking out the Pulsepounders! Shapeshifter was one of several family-friendly movies released by Full Moon Features as a part of their Pulsepounders! set. They’re all overly ambitious, completely insane and riddled with questionable special effects… aka my favorite kind of stuff. Shapeshifter focuses on a kid named Alex. Alex’s parents are both spies who get abducted and taken to Romania. Alex seeks help from the CIA, who responsibly tell him to stay put. But this is Pulsepounders!, so Alex says eff that and flies to Romania himself to rescue his parents. He stays in a hostel, meets some locals, goes to a rock show and, most importantly, meets a gypsy legend named Jango, who plays a big, weird instrument called a glass harmonica and tells Alex he has shapeshifting powers. Yeah, kind of a big leap there but this is PULSEPOUNDERS! Alex turns into a dog. He turns into a dove (but not an eagle like on that cover art). Dude even turns into a goddamn griffin while saving his parents from the third world prison they are locked in. But that’s not nearly all that happens here because this is PULSE-EFFING-POUNDERS! After Jango dies and vanishes into some red twinkles, Alex plays the glass harmonica and summons a digital being from the future that tells him about some plutonium that’s on the loose and could destroy the world. So yeah, Alex goes and gets that back and gives it to a dwarf who tells him he’s a part of an underground society of presumably magic people who can keep it safe. Seems legit. But wait, there’s more. A witch, who can enter into the digital world like Lawnmower Man has taken control of international nuclear launch computers and is going to destroy the world. It’s cool though cause Alex can also enter into the digital world, where he fights the witch and saves the day. This movie is completely nuts. The pace never slows down, which makes sense because they want your pulse to be pounding. If you come across this one (or any other Pulsepounders! movies), definitely give it a watch.
!
